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#1
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Congrats on great Birkies, everyone!
I see that our RSN and Team NSR skiers all did just jim-dandy in the
Birkie today. Congrats! Man, the winning Italian came in a minute off the front. Wow. Ivan only managed the tail end of the first pack. I note that a couple top women were also Italian, with 1st lady in 2:15. Whoa...that's an overall winning time for LP Michigan marathons. I recall noting maybe one LP Michigan name ahead of her. Young Anikin is doing fine. FrontRunner just nipped the first classic finisher, Mike "Baybee" Myers , 2:26. It was cool to see several women finish near each other at around the 200th level, at 2:31. Now, Dell Todd keeps moving on up, it seems to me, 2:36, up above most LP Michiganders. Neat to see some old dog LPers still put in a good race---Chris Weingartz seems to be midpacking often these days, but he had a fine Birkie it looks like to me. Jay T is hanging in there, beating all kinds of people who dared to slack off on their training. Telewhack seems to be moving up, but possibly he suffered. |
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#2
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Whoa, I see that 7th overall, Mike Lewis of St. Paul, had bib#2444. Uh,
isn't that Wave 2? Well, that's a super result. But at some point isn't there a situation going on of: if you move up enough and catch a very fast train, then you finish 5 or 10 minutes up on that train? --Due to the time delay of Wave 2. Is that how that would work? A friend of mine mentioned that there might be a similar concern of timing chips if they started when you crossed the start line. I gather that chips should always be set to start at one time. Otherwise a guy who starts at the back of the pack gets a free minute on whatever lead train he can grab on to. |
#3
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hoping for some race reports????
WENNER? good race... snow slow at start? warm up much during the race? Lots of people waxed wrong is my guess.... (waxed too warm that is... Wed. forecast said 32deg F !!) let's hear ur stories birkie racers... JK |
#5
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Start time of the wave, finish time off the chip. No mat underneath the
start. wrote: Whoa, I see that 7th overall, Mike Lewis of St. Paul, had bib#2444. Uh, isn't that Wave 2? Well, that's a super result. But at some point isn't there a situation going on of: if you move up enough and catch a very fast train, then you finish 5 or 10 minutes up on that train? --Due to the time delay of Wave 2. Is that how that would work? A friend of mine mentioned that there might be a similar concern of timing chips if they started when you crossed the start line. I gather that chips should always be set to start at one time. Otherwise a guy who starts at the back of the pack gets a free minute on whatever lead train he can grab on to. |
#6
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What a year to be a classic skier at the Birkie.
We woke up to -8F on the porchside thermometer a little north of Cable, and I think everyone was more concerned about clothing than wax. No panic wax jobs, just run with what we'd done the night before. Earlier in the week, I'd asked Ahvo for his opinion as to using my new RCS, or my older (and softer) Atomics. His verdict was to 'make sure I had kick, don't worry about the glide'. So the Atomics it was, with Fastwax Tan and flouro powder for glide and Swix VR40 for kick. I was hoping to break 4:00 and maybe the top 100 classic skiers if I had a good day. After losing my skis 10 minutes before the start, finding them in a very different place than I'd been standing [with them], and finally starting at the very back of wave 4 (instead of wave 3), I found that a)my skis were running better than most of the wave 4 skaters, and b)I was feeling OK. I was climbing in-track on all the hills, and just flying by the conga lines. The downhills were even more fun. I knew after the first couple that the track was nearly perfect and I could trust my skis to stay put. Man was the track fast! I punched my watch at 10K, stopped to take the hot pads out of my gloves (something else I didn't get to before I started), and dropped them in my fanny pack. TIP: I'm going to do this from now on - I had warm GU the rest of the race. It's pretty good heated up. I made it a point to grab 'energy' at every station, and do a gel every 10K. I kept sailing up thru the wave 3/4 skaters and pretty soon into a lot of wave 2 folks. I kept expecting to slow down, but it seemed like my splits were getting faster and I just kept flying. I passed OO and the Bitch Hill before I was really aware that everything was working well. Even so, I was one happy dude to see Rosie's Field. Birchlegger Scott Laven (Duluth), with whom I'd skied with for most of the day finally dropped me at the lake and I couldn't pull him back in, but even so I knew I was home. Coming up the finish stretch was sortof a blur - one minute I was turning the corner at the bottom,and then I was done with the best ski race I've ever had. Thanks to the groomers, the weather, Devin Arenz for his wax advice, and Ahvo for his help. Marsh Jones New Brighton,MN |
#7
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Wow great report !
(I posted my report on Jay's thread. Didn't see this one soon enough - sorry) Kinda curious about the start mat business though, as I am sure I saw several 2000# bibs in the Wave 1 start group, and in the race I kept seeing several of these bibs. Hmmm. A free 10 minutes to anyone who doesn't get caught ? That's huge. |
#8
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delltodd wrote:
Wow great report ! (I posted my report on Jay's thread. Didn't see this one soon enough - sorry) Kinda curious about the start mat business though, as I am sure I saw several 2000# bibs in the Wave 1 start group, and in the race I kept seeing several of these bibs. Hmmm. A free 10 minutes to anyone who doesn't get caught ? That's huge. Dell, you had another great race. Nice going. I think they are going to have to add another mat at the base of drum hill or something very early on. The #1 topic at the potluck I went to Saturday night was the wave 2 skier who was provisionally 7th - and nobody knew him. This was mostly a group of elite and wave 1 skiers from the 'cities, so they were all quite surprised. Marsh |
#9
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So those *were* your skis, Marsh! Sorry, but that seemed the only way I
could beat you to the first split ;-) Did you wait for wave 4 to start or was the timing coincidental? You certainly broke 4:00 by more than a few! Yep, bomb-proof tracks; not even the skaters could mess them up, at least by wave 3. Like Jay T, I'd been detraining since early December and am 8-10 lbs over my usual Birke weight, thus I switched to the Korte classic and was just planing to tour. But that always turns out to be a lie when the gun goes off. After my last Korte classic a couple of years ago in ~1:55, I figured the next time 1:48, if not 1:45, seemed like a realistic goal. This time I came in 1:43. At 8k my legs were burning and I started to back off by doing dp and kick-dp through the rolling terrain after the 9k turnoff. At the 16k food stop I took a minute to stock up and drink a flask of diluted gel. Yet, within a couple of minutes an outer thigh cramp set in and survival mode became the order of the day. Around 19-20K a second wind kicked in, but that was aerobic not muscular and so I remained cautious, probably a too much so from the way I felt at the end. There was this younger woman who had passed me at the long food stop that I kept coming up near, without really trying, only to need to stop to rehydrate and start the process again. She finished 8 seconds ahead. My primary goal this year had been to solidify technique and thus I was especially happy that it held up right to the end, even I had to switch to running herringbones on some hills due to fatigue. What really made my day was when the first person to greet me after the finish, a coach in one of the local programs, commented how my technique had looked "really excellent" when I passed him early on (he was skating and must have got me back me at one of my extended food stops). With snow temp at 9 and warming, kick wax was Toko white over blue, plus their binder. Really solid all the way through (sorry Barry and alexmal, but I wasn't ready to risk it with Rode). Someone who used blue powergrip from wave 9 says that even with Hydrex and some Swix extra blue it was icing up going from sun to shade. For glide, I went with Dr. D's Wicked Wax wide range cold fluoro (no poweder), which I got after hearing Marsh's experience at Mora (MN). It didn't feel as free as the day before at Como, worked well enough. The tracks were colder and not as well worn in once the Korte turn off into the woods. There was one young tall thin blond girl from wave 4 that passed me at about 17k, who I'm guessing was Tess Clancy of Marquette. Really good technique. I was able to stay with her striding, but on the first downhill (in the tracks) her Trabs just took off like jets. These high school kids really have it great, training every day with a team, having races every week. If I had that... I did have one fall. On the long fast downhill that sweeps to the left (7.5-8K?), just as I'm flying down in a tuck, a skater (bib 3039) who had fallen at the bottom on the left got up and just stepped over into the tracks without looking (or apparent reason). And I'm yelling for him to get out, but he's like, "Oh, there's someone coming, gee." So to be safe I jump out myself, but probably was concentrating more on him than what I was doing and got a nice slide out of it. On the next uphill, I mentioned to others nearby to watch this guy, who was grunting and struggling just ahead. One skater responded that they knew all about him, as he had already taken two of them out! Look forward to hearing the other tales of the race(s). Hope Lars posts upon his return. Gene Marsh Jones wrote: After losing my skis 10 minutes before the start, finding them in a very different place than I'd been standing [with them], and finally starting at the very back of wave 4 (instead of wave 3), I found that a)my skis |
#10
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Hey, what was FrontRunner's bib#? I don't even know his name - just
"FrontRunner". What suit was he wearing? I made it in ~2:26, too, so we, possibly, skied together. |
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